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> The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment
by _mlbt 2y ago
> The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.
I'm not seeing how they accounted for the fact that people with access to the Internet are more likely to have access to other things that would improve life satisfaction such as food security, quality health care, social and economic safety nets, education, and leisure time. I would imagine factors such as these play a bigger impact than the Internet on a person's well being.
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoHm did you miss the section on this? "The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems." The linked paper has a section on Covariates that explains the methodology used to control for factors such as income.
- _mlbt 2y agoI saw that, but I'm still not convinced. Correlation not equalling causation and all of that. There are too many factors that play into personal well being and the regions of the world with pervasive access to the Internet are drastically different from the regions of the world without it.
- saulrh 2y agoWhich is why you need high-quality and large-scale data on the relationship between income and internet usage and the relationship between income and happiness so you can chain those together and subtract the whole thing out. Yes, error bars stack up rapidly. That's why you need 2 million data points to get a reasonable conclusion, when you only need ~1000 to get high-quality information on things like consumer preferences or political affiliations. Good thing that we have plenty of people that are very interested in things like "how much happier does money make you" and full-scale datasets like that are produced on a regular basis! Really, the math isn't any harder than what's necessary to land a rocket screaming along at mach 8 or reverse a couple terabytes of voltage readings into a nice clean volumetric medical image.
- laylower 2y agoExactly. 2.5 mil is not peanuts. Yes, you can always get more data. But let's not pretend 2.5 is not sufficient to establish statistical relationships.
- disgruntledphd2 2y agoSure, but it's a large sample based on self-report instruments. This is definitely evidence, but I do share the OP's concerns around controls and would regard this finding as somewhat likely to be biased by the kinds of people who both a) have internet and b) are willing to respond to a really, really long poll.
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoWhat are your specific methodological concerns? The model the authors build is a multi-level regression model. They attempt to establish independence between the covariates but do note specifically that: "In turn, this suggests that the contributions of internet access and use on well-being were independent of the covariates we selected for, and thus might indicate causal relations. (Although we highlight the evidence here for causal claims is less than thin.)" I think it would be more useful, especially on a forum known to have a strong opinion on a topic, to establish alternate theories that match these observations and independence relations.
- _mlbt 2y agoThere are an impossible amount of variables at play here. Localities where Internet is pervasive in comparison to areas where it isn't might as well be another planet. I'm not convinced that this study proves what is claimed.
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoPlease firm up your claims. You're getting dangerously close to saying "no amount of evidence can dispel me of my preconceived conclusion" which is pseudoscience. Science is about uncovering evidence then creating theories to fit this evidence. When new evidence arises, old theories are discarded and new theories are created which explain new evidence. It's not about saying "you can't convince me of your conclusion so I'll ignore your evidence."
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- camkego 2y agoIt is very easy to underestimate the affect of covariates in observational studies. That’s why randomized control trials are kind of the gold standard for understanding causative relationships. This was an observational study.